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Regulate Them

Little Rock One thing that shouldn’t get past us in this current Federal Reserve program of bailouts and guarantees for Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase is glaring gap in oversight. Bear Stearns and its investment banking activity and crises management is getting dessert without having to pay for dinner. Their activity was not regulated by the Federal Reserve but they are getting bailed out by the Fed.

One thing that should not escape us in this mayhem and madness is the fact that a lot of huge financial powerhouses whether hedge funds or Bear Stearns are just outside of any effective regulatory environment to protect investors, citizens, and the economy. The SEC does not have the tools to fix any problems of this scale and it is unclear that there were SEC problems in any of this. If Bear faced a “run on the bank,” it was still a bank outside of any real system that conformed to the same rules of the road as everyone else.